I've decided to start a new series of articles with the other philosophers to show the average user some tricks and tips to help them do some neat things and to also maybe save some money. A lot of things are just second nature to us but it also seems to be beyond the grasp of average users.

Not that average users are stupid, not at all. They just perhaps lack the focus on certain technologies or are unaware of how easy it is to do what amounts to really easy and simple things. We Reckless Philosophers are gonna try to show you newbs how easy things can be.

That being said, Here's the first article. This article is hopefully going to show you how to digitally store your your Older music formats into a current one. Say for example, turning your beat up tapes or records into nice portable MP3 files or audio Cd's if you have no Zune or Other MP3 player.


What you'll need.

1. Old Tapes/Records/8 Tracks, Reel to reel what ever you want to archive.
2. You need a means to play your media. Tape Deck, Turntable, whatever. Your player needs a line out source. This is important, otherwise it'll be messier. Doable but messier.
3. A computer with plenty of Hard Drive space and a sound card.
4. A 3.5mm to RCA cable. These come with a lot of things now a days. If you need to purchase one since you have none, then you can (if your impatient and have to have it now) go buy one at radio shack or (if you can wait for a good deal) order one from monoprice.com They have them as low as 1.27 plus shipping for a 6 footer.
5. The right Software. Audacity is free and a great audio editor for this. For me this is kinda the swiss army Knife of audio editors. I use it to cut up MP3's for ring tones, editing our podcasts, and recording our voice overs for the podcasts. Open source is great stuff. You will also need the MP3 codec library called LAME. It's linked to on the audacity website. Audacity can be downloaded here. audacity.sourceforge.net/
   

The simple overview.

What we are going to do here is pretty simple. We need to get the music off your media and then record it on your computer. Then the file we record on the computer will be cut up and then compressed into MP3 format. Then we'll move then into your portable player.

Alternately once we have the audio recorded and cut up we can make a regular audio CD if you have no digital player. Although, I'd be hard pressed to believe you have no MP3 player as most Cell Phones can do it. How you have to get it on your phone is dependent on your phone and won't be covered here.

**note**
MP3 is actually MPEG 2 Layer 3. It was designed to compress audio for video files. The file format has become a standard and ubiquitous and is the reason for music piracy and digital musics popularity in general. Most modern equipment can play MP3 files in one format or another.

For the sake of this article we are going to be digitizing old cassettes to be used on my Zune. I'll even give a brief run through on burning a CD using NERO.

This is a bit of a process, but I think its worth it to save your old memories. And once you have it digitized, You have future proofed it. Now you don't have to find  and buy yet another copy of your favorite album.

This is the simple method, there are things you can do to improve the method. For example you can put a physical graphic equalizer in the mix so you can tailor your sound a bit better. If you find tape hiss to be really bad you can even use some of the tools built in to reduce it. The tools are pretty self explanatory, and a bit of nosing around should give you enough of a clue to use it. All the relevant links are located at the end of the article for your convenience.

The Nuts and bolts.

Set up your Hardware.

First we need to connect the source to your computer. I'm using an old but great quality Sony Dual Cassette deck. The back of the Deck has Line-in and Line-out connectors. We are only concerned with the Line out. Plug your handy 3.5mm to RCA cable into your source. Match the colors RED and WHITE. Then you need to plug the headphone jack into your computer. The headphone jack DOES NOT go into the headphone plug. It DOES NOT go into your MIC jack either. It DOES plugs into your Line-in jack.

If you have no connectors on your source (old boom box or whatever) then you can still do this but you will need a different cable. You can get the same signal from the Headphone jack. To use the headphone jack you need a 3.5mm stereo patch cable. It's the same cable you would use to plug your CD Player, Zune or iPod into your factory stereo in your car. Basically its a cable with headphone jacks on both ends. If you do this you will need to set your volume at around halfway and not touch it. There is no need to worry that the sound may be quiet, you can adjust that later in the recording software.

Now that the hardware is set up it's time to set up your media. In my case I need to make sure my tapes are fully rewound.

Set up your computer.

Make sure you have installed Audacity correctly. Now you need to set up the LAME codec. Once you have downloaded it and unzipped it copy all the files from the folder you unzipped it to into the Audacity program folder. This is Usually C:\Program Files\Audacity\ . Next run Audacity and then Click the “Edit” menu. Go to  Edit>Preferences>. Now click the File Formats Tab.

Now you will click the “Find Library” button. It will ask you if you need to locate the lame_enc.dll file. Click yes and browse to the audacity folder that you copied the files to. Once you select the file click OK. Next set the bit rate to 128. Next go to the AUDIO I/O Tab. It should default to “Microsoft Sound Mapper - Output” for Playback, and “Microsoft Sound Mapper – Input” for recording. The channels should be on “2 (Stereo)”.

Now here's the last thing. You need to make sure that the line input is not muted. It often is by default. It can be found in Start>Programs>Accessories>Entertainment>Volume Control. This should be set about half way also and make sure its not muted.

Record your music.

Now hit play on your source device. After you hit play click the record button in audacity. It's the round red circle button. It will show you the waveform as it records. Also the sound will play through your PC speakers. It might be a good idea to turn them down so as not to blow out the rest of the folks in your house with your old cheesy dub mixes.

Let the whole thing play out. If you are recoding a tape like I am once the side is over click the pause button while its recording and then flip the tape, rewind it so its cued up, hit play and then click the pause button again. This will ensure you have one long audio file to work with. Once the entire tape is recorded you can hit stop in Audacity.

Now you have 2 options.

Option 1. Save that as is. Useful for those special mix tapes.
Option 2. Cut that sucker up so you can have individual tracks for each song.

I do Option 3. Thats a combination of both. Basically once I record the whole thing I save it to MP3 format. That way it takes up less room on my PC. Also it allows me to immediately record another cassette and worry about cutting them up later.

I suggest option 2.

**note**
I take the time to create a file with the file names I want to use while the music is recording. I use the format of “Artist – Album Name – Track number with leading zero – SongTitle.MP3”. I do this because its easy to cut and paste later when you actually save the tracks.


Cutting the Tracks.

Now take the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen and drag it all the way to the left. You will see a bunch of flat line. That flat line is dead air. You can crop it by selecting the blank spot and hitting delete. You can zoom in in that portion to get good close crops by clicking the zoom in and zoom out button in Audacity.

Now to select the first track click the beginning of the wave form, and then scroll right until you see the same flat line. That next flat line is the space between the songs. When you see the flat line is really flat click that spot on the waveform. Be careful, though some fade outs can trick you and its a good idea to play the end portion of the first track and make sure. Just select a bit at the end and be sure its dead. If your satisfied that you have gotten it all click the end of the waveform while pressing shift on your keyboard.  The selected portion should be highlighted in blue. Now click the copy button. Now click any of the back ground (dark gray) then click the paste button.

That will give you that track separately Now to check your work, click the solo button on that track and hit play. If you did it all correctly you should have your first song playing. If you don't go back and try again. If you find the recording level too low or too high, you can adjust the volume of the track with the slider marked with + and -.

Once your satisfied that it sounds good, click the file menu “File>Export Selection as MP3...” It will give you a file dialog. Select where you want to save the track. If you had the foresight to make your file with you file names up while it was playing copy and paste the name into the dialog and hit “Save”. Audacity will then take some time exporting (usually pretty fast, under a minute or so) and you will then have your new digital copy.

Simply repeat the select, copy and paste, and export until you have all the songs done. It's that easy.


Using your music on a Zune or MP3 Player

Once you have all your tracks you can go in and edit the ID3 tags so they are easier to work with in the Zune software or iTunes. Or whatever you use. To use my tracks in my Zune I simply have to copy it into one of the monitored directories. The Zune software adds music and other media files by monitoring folders you select during the install. I keep each full album in a folder named for the album. All my digital albums are in a folder called albums, while all my individual tracks are stored in a folder called bands. Both the “Albums” and “Bands” folders are located in a folder called MP3. So in my case  I have been digitizing the “Gin Blossoms” album, so the Folder name would be “Gin Blossoms – New Miserable Experience”. That folder would then be located in the Albums folder.

When the Zune software loads it looks in the folder called MP3 and drills down and makes note of any new music files and adds them to the library. Once its in the library it can be moved onto my Zune easily during my next Sync.

Burning a New Audio CD with Nero

Nero costs money and its not cheap but it comes bundled with a lot of computers so chances are you'll have it or something similar. This will only work with Nero but other software will be similar.

1. Run Nero Start Smart.
2. Using the drop down at the top select CD
3. Click the Musical not icon.
4. Click the “Make Audio CD” button.
5. Nero will start and give you a dual interface. The left will be you cd layout, the right will be an explorer type interface.
6. Navigate to where you stored your newly digitized tracks.
7. Select each track and drag it into the left pane.
8. Once all the tracks are dragged over you can rearrange how they are laid out or leave it as is.
9. Once your satisfied click the “Burn” Icon.
10. Make sure “Finalize CD” is checked.
11. Make sure “Disc at once” is selected as your Write Method.
12. Click the “Burn” button.
13. Leave your machine alone until its finished burning.
14. Label the CD with a Felt tip Permanent Marker like a Sharpie.
15. Enjoy your new CD copy of your old mix tape, Record, or cassette.
    

Given there are other pieces of software that will automate it more, but they cost money, come with extra hardware, and are basically rip offs. A little elbow grease and time and you have better control over everything you want to do.

Leave comments or Questions and I'll do my best to answer them. Hope you found this useful.


Audacity can Be located below
Http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

LAME can be located here
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3

The 3.5mm to RCA cable can be had cheaply here
http://www.monoprice.com